2.5/5 ★ – theebigbamtheory's review of Watch_Dogs.

Blasted through Watch Dogs, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's an competent and relatively safe open world game. Since I played Watch Dogs 2 first, it's certainly hard to shake off the feeling that I downgraded to a worse experience, but I think it's still a decent game. The story had a few good moments, and beating the villain does feel satisfying since the game did well to make me hate him, but it's a flatline for most of it. Which is a shame, since I kinda like the hardboiled edgy vibe of it, although it's gets too melodramatic at times. The main story missions are fun enough to make me want to blast through all of it, but they are noticeably lacking in objective variety. It does end with a really good mission, but there's not many standout missions gameplay-wise. There's some pretty cool ones setting-wise though, like the sex trafficking one. I think what this game lacks the most is the little details. You know, the kind of detail that you would notice and made you think that real people worked on this game. Little touches of personality here and there, the game really has little of that. Chicago can feel like a soulless city at times, even when I'm having fun with the side activities and such. There's just not enough flavor to it all. I think the game needs more of things like Bedbug, he's like this young wholesome gangsta dude that really ended in the wrong place, and his interactions with Aiden is a highlight for me. There's only a few good characters in this game, and he is certainly the most likeable for me. Another thing I really don't like is the negative tendencies of the side stories. Why are there so many conversations and texts about vulgar sex stuff? Some of it are even domestic violence stuff. It's kinda disturbing tbh. It made me actively avoid hacking into conversations and such... Which I guess is a good thing to teach to people, so at least there's that. While this game didn't really impress me at times, at least this game will make me appreciate WD2 more, and I think it's worth playting through because of it.